The sun beams down onto my black uniform. I grip the racket tighter and bounce the ball twice before I toss it up and go through the arm motions and serve the ball over the net and in the court. After the rally, I move to the opposite side of the hash mark at the end of the court and serve again. Tennis is a tedious, sometimes monotonous sport. Tennis takes a lot of time to improve on, both physically and mentally. When I first started playing my junior year in high school, my dad would keep telling me that tennis is probably the most mentality based sport I have ever played and that is what I would more than likely have to work on most. Needless to say, he was right. Changing the way you think about a sport is a hard task, though not impossible.
Growing up, I had always played team sports. Basketball, softball, volleyball, and pick-up games of football, you name it, I probably played it once. When playing team sports, my teammates and I had to work together to solve problems on the court and figure out a solution together. Another thing team sports taught me was that when someone messed up, everyone was to support them and help them improve. But I learned quickly that playing singles tennis was nothing like that. When I had a problem, I had to figure out what I was doing wrong and fix it myself, without help from a teammate. If I kept messing up, I was the one who had to deal with it, because I was only hurting myself when I did something wrong. That switch was strangely hard to me. I had never really had to deal with something like that before, being completely on my own on the court.
My junior year I did not catch on to the mentality until late in the season. I was constantly beating myself up over little mistakes and other things that it was hard to shake it off, but I finally learned. But, that next fall I played volleyball and my teammate mentality came back quickly and naturally to me that everything I learned in tennis the previous year flew out the door. My senior year I tried hard not to let things bother me, which was a complete 180 from junior year when everything bothered me. My junior year if I did something wrong, my face read that it was the end of the world, but my senior year, I hardly looked like I cared, which was not the case at all. It was difficult for me to find a balance between caring too much, or caring very little. It took a lot of time and effort during practices and matches to find my equilibrium again. The end of my senior year I felt steady during matches and I cared enough, but not too much.
Mentality was not my only tedious task in tennis, the physical aspects were just as tedious. I never played tennis as a competitive sport until I was sixteen. Not to brag, but I seemed to pick up a racket and be able to play competitively without any prior training, (I do not count gym class as prior training). But my junior year when I decided to play tennis instead of softball I was able to take lessons from one of my brother’s friend who had played tennis in high school and he even made it to Regional. I was excited because I thought it would not be hard and I would be naturally good. But, to my dismay, I was only average and doing everything the proper way felt awkward and unnatural. I would go home complaining to my parents that I was no good and I could not do anything right. They told me that I would not be able to pick up a racket and automatically play like Nadal, even he needed lessons when he was younger. So I stuck out the lessons and improved tremendously before the season.
My junior year I played #1 junior varsity singles, beating out a senior who had played since her freshman year. I continued to improve and I even saw some varsity action. All of the tedious hours I put into tennis paid off and I was actually pretty good. My senior year I went back and forth between #1 and #2 varsity single and I had a blast.
Sports tend to be tedious work, especially if they are new to you and you have never played another sport like it. I took some lessons before trying out to make sure I was qualified, I went to the courts on some weekend to play with my dad, I would even arrive early and sometimes stay late to improve. I would constantly do the same drills over and over again to improve. The drills were monotonous, but paid off in the end.
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